To me, "Contemporary Fiction" is fiction set in the "real world" of today or the recent past, which rules out SF. But that's just me .

I agree. Plus, recent past is post WW2.

I don't think there's any of the books mentioned here that I think is contemporary fiction. The problem is probably that there are not very much contemporary fiction freely avalable here, compared to, say, public domain or "genre" works, such as sci-fi.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Can I nominate 'Looking Backward' by Edward Bellamy (1888)?

It's available here (thanks to Patricia).

"The book tells the story of Julian West, a young American who, towards the end of the 19th century, falls into a deep, hypnosis-induced sleep and wakes up more than a century later. He finds himself on the same spot (Boston, Massachusetts) but in a totally changed world: It is the year 2000 and, while he was sleeping, the U.S.A. has been transformed into a socialist utopia."

I don't think there's any of the books mentioned here that I think is contemporary fiction. The problem is probably that there are not very much contemporary fiction freely avalable here, compared to, say, public domain or "genre" works, such as sci-fi.

Can we scrap August's theme and just pick a book written within say the last 30 years? This is turning out to be a rather hard one and by limiting it to just free eBooks, we are going to have either nothing that actually fits the category or we will have 1 or 2 books at best to vote on.

Now if we didn't limit it to just free books, I'd be able to nominate a really good one. But it would have to be bought.

It's one I've just noticed and thought I'd read - thinking "contemporary" this one seems to fit the bil very well - plus Rose Tremain is a great novelist.

Book blurb:"In the wake of factory closings and his beloved wife's death, Lev is on his way from Eastern Europe to London, seeking work to support his mother and his little daughter. After a spell of homelessness, he finds a job in the kitchen of a posh restaurant, and a room in the house of an appealing Irishman who has also lost his family. Never mind that Lev must sleep in a bunk bed surrounded by plastic toys--he has found a friend and shelter. However constricted his life in England remains he compensates by daydreaming of home, by having an affair with a younger restaurant worker (and dodging the attentions of other women), and by trading gossip and ambitions via cell phone with his hilarious old friend Rudi who, dreaming of the wealthy West, lives largely for his battered Chevrolet. Homesickness dogs Lev, not only for nostalgic reasons, but because he doesn't belong, body or soul, to his new country-but can he really go home again?"

This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith's widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to "help people with problems in their lives." Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witchdoctors. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency received two Booker Judges' Special Recommendations and was voted one of the International Books of the Year and the Millennium by the Times Literary Supplement.